Jump Start With Art!

Welcome to Jump-Start With Art. What is it?

It's an idea and an experiment based on some pretty amazing educational philosophies I've come across over the past few years concerning arts and creativity in education. You'll find some links to articles and Youtube presentations at the end of this post and in the blog's sidebar. I suggest you read/watch them all. They're excellent.

My personal philosophy on teaching arts--based on what I've learned--is this:
*First, children of all ages thrive--educationally, spiritually, and mentally--when exposed to the arts and when given time and teaching that helps them create freely.
*Second, art education should seldom or never involve by-rote projects or grades. Children should be taught the basic concepts of art, then encouraged to freely create on their own. However, it is also important that a proportionally large amount of creative learning be purpose-driven, in that its purpose is to achieve an objective through creative problem-solving. This allows children the creative freedom to take risks without the fear of retribution or embarrassment, an important skill for future endeavors.
*Third, there are no correct or incorrect answers in the creation of art as there are in the study of mathematical concepts or the structure of the English sentence. However, when engaging in creative problem-solving, it is important to discuss with the child (in a supportive, nonjudgmental way) the pros and cons of their solution, and to allow time to consider other potential solutions along with THEIR pros and cons.
*Fourth, art education is an opportunity for children to grow in confidence, problem solving skills, and creativity that will help them face challenges throughout life. Educational philosophers are telling us more and more that the future of our society needs creative thinkers, and there is no better way to instill creative thinking in our children than an open and full education in the arts.
*Fifth, art education should allow opportunities for exploration and exposure in a wide variety of arts--visual, performance, literary, and art appreciation.
*Sixth, a small daily dose of creative work/play at the beginning of the school day can enrich learning throughout the day by opening the creative, problem-solving centers of the brain.
*Seventh, Jump-Start With Art is not a way to teach my child to be creative, but to give him/her an open outlet for natural human creativity.

While our public schools struggle to maintain arts funding, our homeschools have the ability to make arts and creative learning a central part of our childrens' education, and to do so at very little cost. And we hope it's going to be pretty easy. We'll find out. You'll find out with us as we keep our daily (on school days) blog of our Jump-Start With Art experiment.

The arts are composed of four major areas of study:
1. Visual arts (including drawing and painting, sculpture, photography, design, architecture, crafts, and textile arts);
2. Performance arts (including theater, film, dance, music);
3. Literary arts (including poetry and literature);
4. Art history (including the study of great masterworks and great artists).

At the start of every day we'll spend 15 or 20 minutes doing something simple associated with one area of the arts, whether that be enjoying or creating art. How to decide what to do each day will be part of the experiment, and our Jump-Start activities will not replace other learning in literary and visual arts. We'll still do weekly more deeply-involved art lessons, creative writing, and literature, as well as engaging in family activities involving performance arts whenever possible.

We hope you'll enjoy the experiment with us!

LINKS:
Music Benefits the Brain
Scientific Reasons to Play Music
In Music the Whole Brain Gets Involved
Changing Education Paradigms
Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Creativity in Education
Creativity and Education
In Their Own Way (Book)

I welcome suggestions of other resources!